Bob Dylan | Critical Essay by Wilfrid Mellers

While Dylan's originality is his strength, his art has roots, and these are a strength also. Primarily, one looks to the words, since the significance of early Dylan is inseparable from his articulateness. The basic source is the traditional folk ballad, both in its British origins and in its American permutations. Closely allied to the ballad are children's rhymes, British and American; Negro blues poetry; the Bible, the mythology of which permeates the American mid-west; and runic verses of all kinds, reminding us of, and possibly even including, the lyrical poems of Blake.

Dylan's musical sources are both white and black. Most fundamental is the American transmutation of British ballad style. In the world of the "poor white," the grand modal themes survive, but the line becomes harder, tighter, the rhythm more cabined and confined in the metres of hymnody…. The happiness is eupeptic...